The House

So,...on July 16th (my mom's birthday) we closed on our little piece of paradise. Its kinda more like a nightmare right now, but we know it has TONS of potential, and are excited about what will be the "before and after" of our house. It's just outside of Jacksonville, OR in the heart of wine country. Its one acre, with an awesome view and a disaster of a house. Its becoming less and less of a disaster every day. Eventually it will be perfect for us.

I guess its that time again...

....to start writing about whats going on with us, since our lives have lost their usual routine right now. We have once again said good-bye to friends in Seattle, and embarked on a new type of adventure.

Between our last blog post in October, and until a week ago, our lives remained relatively unchanged. We lived in Seattle (in the same apt pictured below), and worked in the jobs we had gotten back in March of 2008. We were enjoying our time in Seattle; Brent got a ton of teaching experience, and I enjoyed setting up a house and managing all things domestic. However, the longer we stayed in Seattle, the more we found ourselves desiring a life with less bustle and more time.

Long story short, we found a property in Jackson County, Oregon that we are really excited about. It will allow us to have a bit of land to garden and have some chickens and goats. The house needs a ton of work, but we are really looking forward to setting down some roots in Brent's hometown, close to family.

Right now we are still waiting to close on the house, crossing our fingers that it will all go as planned. Once again, Brent's parents have let us stay with them during our transition.

To be continued....

Wow, its been a while!

Here are a couple of pics of our rather unremarkable Shoreline, WA apartment:

Man, time flies. February was our last post...here it is already October! Well, since our last post we have moved to Seattle. I work at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation (doing what I did before we left on the trip) and Brent has been teaching at Edmonds Community College, Cascadia Community College and Shoreline Community College. He has been able to focus solely on teaching, which has been nice.

Seattle weather has been challenging, we often remember the glory of Thailand and its beaches, but with airfares as high as they have been, and this doomsday financial crisis, we have kept our heads together and not flown away....though it seems some days it takes every ounce of my energy not to.

We are living a very "typical" life here, dare I say, boring? I thought it would take longer for me to itch for more travels, but I would have left 3 months ago, had I had the opportunity. I have the adventure bug again, and I wonder how it will play out.

We'll keep you posted.;-)

Finding Jobs

Well, We've had quite a time hiding out looking for jobs! Brent's brother owns a home near Idleyld Park, OR about 30 minutes from Roseburg, OR. It was a perfect place to hang out and try to get jobs. We stayed there for almost two months (Jan-Feb).

The fruits of Brent's labor paid off. He managed to get a teaching job and a part time laser gig! In April Brent will start teaching Physics at Edmonds Community College, north of Seattle. We have recently relocated to Seattle, found a place to rent, and are reconstructing our lives here in Seattle. Its wierd to be back, but really good.

Christmas!

Well, Brent and I have survived Christmas 2007! We had our first real experience of trying to spend the holidays with both families - the fiasco that all of my married friends used to to talk about. It was well worth trying to "do it all." We got to visit my family out in Baltimore, Maryland for about 5 days, and then flew out on the 24th to get back here to Oregon to do Christmas morning with Brent's family. The gifts we hauled all over Asia were well worth it. It seemed everyone appreciated a token of our trip, and it was fun to share some of the trip with them in that way.

Good News!

We wanted to announce to all of our faithful blog readers that on November 24th the beauty and romance of Thailand got the better of Brent, and he asked me to marry him... I said yes!